Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Ninjago Birthday Party

Well, I thought that I would start out with a birthday party we did for our oldest son. Last summer our soon to be 7 year old asked for a Ninjago themed birthday party. My first reaction was great, seeing as at that time there were no party decorations available at stores. So I had to think outside of the box and be creative, thank goodness for Pinterest. I thought, "I can do this" and this is the party that came from many hours spent looking for ideas on Pinterest, talking over with my very creative friend and much brainstorming. Hope you enjoy and I do apologize as it is a long post.

So if you have a boy around this age I am sure you have heard of the Lego Ninjago theme. I choose to go with an Amazing Race type game with the Ninjago theme. We divided the boys up into 4 teams of 2 which worked out perfectly as there are four ninja. We had Team Cole, Team Kai, Team Jay and Team Zane. Each team was given their envelope which contained each of the seven challenges (7 challenges for a 7th bithday). To help prevent any downtime at each game, I had listed each of their challenges in a different order.

The Challenges were as follows:The Bubble ChallengeFor this challenge one teammate blew a bubble while the other sat across from them at the table holding a plastic cup and tried to catch the bubble without popping it. They did enjoy this challenge and would switch so each of them got to try to catch the bubbles.

The Temple of Fire ChallengeFor this challenge the kids were given two stones each, which were stone shapes cut out of black craft foam from the craft store. They had to lay them down and step on them and pick them up as they went moving themselves toward the finish line.

Beware of the Snake Pit

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This challenge proved to be a favorite. We placed a balance beam on top of plastic crates I found at Target. This was then positioned over a small pool filled with water and of course snakes found at the Dollar Tree. Both teammates had to cross over successfully before advancing to the next challenge. I do believe many of them fell into the pit on purpose, but who can tell these things.

The Ninjago Buckets ChallengeThis was the classic game of tossing the bean bag into the buckets. Their scores had to add up to 7 to move on.

Tea Time with Sensei WuThis challenge proved much easier for the boys than I had thought, but was funny nonetheless. They were to drink a cup of tea with out using their hands. For Sensei's tea I used Arizona ice tea, for the cups we used Dixie cups.

The Skeleton BattleFor this challenge the boys had to use their golden swords and work as a team to move the skeletons to the finish line. The swords were made out of foam pool noodles, found at the Dollar Tree, that I had cut in half and doctored up with some black duct tape. Here is where I found the idea. My husband got creative and drew skeletons on the white balloons.

Shurikens of Ice Freeze TagThis by far was the most popular of all of the challenges. This was saved until the end and all of the teams competed against one another. Each player was given a spray bottle filled with ice cold water that I had found at the Dollar Tree (sorry I did not get a picture of these). The object of the game was to not be sprayed with the water and become frozen. However, if you were frozen you were still able to freeze other players still in the game. Needless to say, everyone was throughly enjoying getting very wet. It turned into a super fun water game on a really warm summer day.

As I previously mentioned there were no store bought options available for any Ninjago decorations. So I was left to come up with some homemade options and was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out. First, I wanted a Happy Birthday Banner, as no party is complete without a banner announcing the celebration. I crafted mine from 4x6 sheets of scrapbook paper, grosgrain ribbon and some stencils I found at the craft store. I then used some clipart found online of the characters and voila...a Ninjago Birthday banner.

There were some great balloon ideas on Pinterest, like this one here which was my inspiration. I purchased some punch balls from the Dollar Tree and made sure to get the ninja colors. I made faces from paper, which I cannot claim as my own, my good friend Cheri made these for her sons birthday party and shared her crafty secrets with me. First, I made a template of the shape of the face for the ninjas and cut these out of yellow wrapping paper. Then I used a circle punch and hole punch for the eyes, made the eyebrows and then glued them on. I used clear contact paper to laminate them to protect them from all of the water games. This same method was used to create all of the ninja faces on the buckets and favor bags, I just changed the size of the faces to fit the surface they were being used for.

While the kids took a break for lunch and for cake we played the Guess how many Legos are in the jar, which I had seen here. In keeping with the Ninjago theme, all of the Legos were the ninja colors.

As all good parties have to end, this one did too. To say thanks to all of his guests, we made little Ninjago favor bags using red lunch bag style favor bags from the party store using the same ninja faces. Just folded over the top edge, punch a couple of holes, added a thank you tag and put some ribbon to tie it all together.

We also made Ninjago water bottles using a free printable bottle wrap that I found here. We attached a Kool-Aid packet and it was another cute little thank you for his guests.Our son had a wonderful time celebrating with his friends and for this we felt we were successful in hosting his Ninjago themed birthday party. Thanks for reading, as I know this was a long post. Hope you have fun planning your next party. If you have any questions with regards to anything I may have not throughly explained please feel free to ask.

About Me

So as you might have guessed I am Robyn, and this is a little ditty about me. I am a stay at home mom of 3 wonderful kids, a daughter and two sons. I love being crafty, home decorating and baking. Most of all I love to do these with my family and friends. Hope that you enjoy watching my success and failures. So glad you are here.